Before that time, where Apsley House now stands, stood a tavern called the Hercules Pillars, the same at which the redoubted Squire Western, with his clerical satellite, is represented as taking up his abode on his arrival in London, and conveying the fair Sophia. The character of the house in Fielding's time is implied in the speech put into the Squire's mouth when he says he looked upon the landlord as a fit person to give him information respecting fashionable people, seeing their carriages stopped at his house. It seems to have been a comfortable low inn in the outskirts of the town, at which gentlemen's horses and grooms were put up, and whither farmers and graziers resorted. In front of the inn (and in front of Apsley House till a comparatively recent period), a square, rather pyramidical column stood by the kerb-stone, on which was engraved the distance from the Standard in Cornhill. Between the three houses next to Apsley House and Hamilton Place was a row of small houses, one of them a public-house called the Triumphant Chariot. It was a watering-house for

hackney-coaches, and by the kerb-stone in front of it was a bench for the porters, and a board over it for depositing their loads. Such resting-places for that strong-backed fraternity were once universal in front of this class of houses, and they are still bright spots in our memory, associated with sunny days in June, tempered by light breezes, with watering troughs for the horses, and with deep draughts of stout for the men, such as are idealised in Hogarth's Beer Street.' About forty yards west of Hamilton Place was the street mentioned by Faulkner as deriving its name from the Hamilton family; it contained twenty small houses, and two or three on a larger scale; they were pulled down, and

Hamilton Place built, about thirty-five years ago. Where the opening of Hamilton Place is now, was a one-storied building occupied by a barber, as we have been told by one upon whom that functionary has operated, before the march of comfort had taught every man to handle his own razor as well as to be present at the shaving of his own beard. Between Park Lane and Hyde Park Corner there was a terrace elevated some feet above the road, which was lowered within the last thirty years; the houses between Hamilton Place and Apsley House are sometimes called the Terrace still. In this part of Piccadilly a Mr. Winstanley had, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, his "water theatre,”—a house distinguished from its neighbours by a "windmill on the top of it, in which curious effects produced by hydraulic pressure were exhibited in the evenings." Evelyn speaks of Winstanley as an ingenious man, and Steele alludes to his theatre in the Tatler.' The eccentric Sir Samuel Moreland, also a mechanical genius and acquaintance of Evelyn, dates a letter from his "hut near Hyde Park Gate."

The ground intervening between Park Lane and Devonshire House was from a very remote period the scene of May Fair-an annual occasion of rude festivity, which, although repeatedly presented by grand juries as a nuisance, kept its ground till far in the last century. The annual fair granted by Edward I. to the Hospital of St. James's was removed at the time of the enclosure of St. James's Park by Henry VIII. to Brook Fields,—the ground on both sides of the rivulet of Tyburn, which formerly crossed Piccadilly east of where the ranger's lodge now stands, probably under "the new bridge" mentioned by Stow in his narrative of Sir Thomas Wyatt's rash enterprise. Pepys, in 1660, calls it St. James's Fair." An advertisement quoted by Malcolm,* which appeared in the London journals of 27th April, 1700, conveys an idea of the character of the fair at that time :-" In Brookfield market-place, at the east corner of Hyde Park, is a fair to be kept for the space of sixteen days, beginning with the 1st of May; the first three days for live cattle and leather, with the same entertainments as at Bartholomew Fair, where there are shops to be let ready built for all manner of tradesmen that usually keep fairs, and so to continue yearly at the same place." The May Fair of 1702 opened with great éclat. There was Mr. Miller's booth "over against" Mr. Barnes, the rope-dancer's, where was presented an excellent droll, called Crispin Crispianus, or a Shoemaker a Prince,' with the best machines, swinging, and dancing ever yet in the fair." The pickpockets and others of the dishonest fraternity were, however, so active that the magistrates felt called upon to interfere; and some soldiers taking part with the mob against the constables, Mr. John Cooper, a peace-officer, was killed; he was buried at St. James's Church, and a funeral sermon preached on the occasion by Dr. Wedgewood before the justices, high constable, &c. &c., of Westminster. The Observator,' a paper published twice a week, said next year of May Fair, in reference to these events-"Oh the piety of some people about the Queen, who can suffer things of this nature to go undiscovered to her Majesty, and consequently unpunished! Can any rational man imagine that her Majesty would permit so much lewdness as is committed at May Fair for so many days together so near her royal palace, if she knew anything of the matter? I do not believe the patent for that fair allows the patentees the liberty of setting up the

* Anecdotes, &c., ii. 108.

*

Devil's shops, and exposing his merchandise to sale; nor was there ever one fair or market in England constituted for this purpose. But this fair is kept contrary to law, and in defiance of justice; for the last fair, when the civil magistrates came to keep the Queen's peace there, one constable was killed and three others wounded." In 1708 the grand jury of Westminster presented the fair as a nuisance, and for the time it appears to have been discontinued, if not absolutely suppressed. In the Tatler' of 18th April, 1709, it is observed-" Advices from the upper end of Piccadilly say that May Fair is utterly abolished; and we hear Mr. Pinkethman has removed his ingenious company of strollers to Greenwich." And on the 24th of May-" May Fair is now broke. The downfal of May Fair has quite sunk the price of this noble creature (a tame elephant), as well as of many other curiosities of nature. A tiger will sell almost as cheap as an ox; and I am credibly informed a man may purchase a calf with three legs for very nearly the value of one with four. I hear likewise that there is great desolation among the gentlemen and ladies who were the ornaments of the town, and used to shine in plumes and diadems, the heroes being most of them pressed, and the queens beating hemp." May Fair survived, however; for the newspapers of the time inform us that in 1736 an ass-race attracted vast crowds to May Fair;" and in 1744 the grand jury of Middlesex, among several gaminghouses and places frequented by people of bad character, presented “The proprietors of a place called Hallam's New Theatre, at May Fair, within this county, where there are usually great meetings of idle and disorderly persons." And in the edition of Maitland published in 1756 May Fair is mentioned as still annually celebrated.

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What neither justice, grand jury, nor constable could put down, seems to have been squeezed out of existence by the progress of building leaving no room for its fantastic gambols. A paragraph in the London Journal,' 27th May, 1721, states "The ground on which May Fair formerly stood is marked out for a large square, and several fine streets and houses are built upon it." After Sir Walter Clarges obtained possession of the lease granted by his father to Neale, his grounds were soon let on building-leases; and before the middle of the eighteenth century Piccadilly West had an almost continuous range of houses on the north side. Between the end of Dover Street and the bottom of the hill westward there was originally a terrace raised some three feet above the carriage-road. The old pavement of this elevation, of a kind of stone resembling cobblers' lapstone, has never been removed, but is now four feet below the surface. The proprietor of a house in that part of Piccadilly came upon it some years since in digging a cellar. Seventy years ago there were no houses in Piccadilly to the west of Devonshire House (with the exception of Bath House) more than one or two stories high. Many of them were inns or watering-houses, like the Hercules Pillars or the Triumphant Chariot. Halfmoon Street and White Horse Street appear to have been named after public-houses which stood at their corners in Piccadilly. The Peartree livery-stables received that name from a man called Peartree, who kept them for forty or fifty years. At the bottom of the hill, where Engine Street now is, was a large mason-yard, known by the name of the Figure-yard, which was built up about sixty years ago.

Bath House, already alluded to, was the first house of any pretensions erected

to the west of Devonshire House. It was built by Pulteney Earl of Bath, after Sir Robert Walpole, by forcing him into the House of Peers, had contrived to place him on the shelf in the very moment of his fancied triumph. This house, after being transformed into the Pulteney Hotel, to which the title of Imperial was subsequently added, on account of its having been occupied by the Emperor Alexander during his visit to London, has been replaced by the mansion of Lord Ashburton. Apsley House and the three mansions adjoining it seem to stand next in point of seniority. One of the houses occupied by ex-financier Calonne is now the residence of the ruler of the European money-market. About sixty years ago a house was built for the late Lord Barrymore on the site of the "Figureyard." It was burned down a few years after its erection, and the house now leased out in chambers erected where it stood. Hamilton Place was built by Mr. Adams, about thirty-five years ago. The house with a bow-window fronting Piccadilly, a little to the east of Hamilton Place, nearly opposite the new entrance into the Green Park, was the residence of the notorious Duke of Queensberry, better known as "Old Q.," with an adjunctive epithet we care not to repeat. The house built by the father of Mr. Michael Angelo Taylor for the Duke of Grafton came next in order. A view of the Ranger's house in the Green Park was engraved and published fifty years ago, with the designation" Rus in urbe ;" the stags over the gateway were placed there by the late Lord William Gordon,

when Deputy Ranger. It would be in vain to attempt enumerating all: suffice it to say that the one and two storied houses of this part of Piccadilly have of late years been for the most part either replaced by finer buildings or have had their fronts entirely altered.

Some time, however, elapsed after this improvement upon the buildings in this part of Piccadilly had made considerable progress, before the street assumed its present elegant and airy appearance. The toll-gate at Hyde Park Corner, which narrowed and interrupted the thoroughfare, and gave a confined appearance to the street, was only removed about the end of 1825. Where an iron railing now permits pleasing glimpses of the Park, was, within the memory of many

who have not yet passed the middle stage of life, a long blank line of dead wall. There might be seen, strung in a long line, ballads-not as now, "one hundred choice new songs for one penny" crammed into one huge sheet, but each apart on its tiny strip of whity-brown paper, "fluttering in the breeze," or, if a somewhat violent pun can be tolerated, dancing on the air to which they were set. The foot-path under this wall was considered fifty or sixty years ago unsafe at night for solitary passengers, many robberies being committed there. It was under this Park wall that the Prince of Wales, described in his epitaph as "Fred, who was alive and is dead," dutifully sat to huzza the voters on their way to Brentford, who went to vote against his father's government. This, and the commotion, what time the Sergeant at Arms, if we may believe a poet of the day, serenaded Sir Francis Burdett, then occupying the house now the Duke of St. Albans', after this fashion

"The lady she sate and she play'd on the lute,

And she sung, 'Will you come to the bower?'
The sergeant-at-arms had stood hitherto mute,
But now he advanc'd, like an impudent brute,

And said, 'Will you come to the Tower?'"

may serve to show how differently we manage these affairs from the way they set about them in the days of Sir Thomas Wyatt. The outside of the toll-gate was equally disfigured by the dead wall of Hyde Park extending towards Knightsbridge. The accompanying cut shows the appearance of St. George's Hospital before it was rebuilt by Wilkins in 1827. The centre of the building was the mansion of Pope's

"Sober Lanesborough dancing with the gout,"

who died here in 1724. The wings were added previous to the first opening of the hospital for the reception of patients in 1734. The view of the open country beyond it is now intercepted by the houses in Grosvenor Place-indeed so completely has Pimlico been built up, that we might say with more propriety the open country has ceased to exist.